In a statement, Pat Fowler, executive director of FCCG said, “There’s more gambling going on in the stock market than all other forms of gambling combined. And for some people, it will end up having the same impact on their lives as compulsive gambling.”

Fowler sites examples of how day trading can ruin peoples lives, such as; college students amassing such losses they must drop out of school to repay the huge debt, a grandmother who turned embezzler to pay for her addiction, or a businessman who turned to selling drugs to cover his losses.

I found this article on “Casino Gambling Web,” a website that also published an article entitled “Online Day Trading and Internet Gambling are the Same Thing” which concludes that the US government should “either legalize Internet gambling, or criminalize day trading” which is dumb considering they are very different in many important ways.
Yes day trading can be gambling, but so can crossing the street if you close your eyes before crossing.
How can you avoid gambling - even with craps in Atlantic City? Just know your odds before you bet and define your risk.

When I went to Atlantic City the other weekend, I took with me about 1R worth of money to gamble. I figured I would risk about what I usually risk on one trade. I was fine losing that amount. When I withdrew the cash from my bank, I considered it money lost.
I read about craps online. Although it has the best odds out of any other casino game of chance, it still has a negative expectancy - the optimal strategy is not to bet. Not betting may not sound like much fun, but some people consider losing money even less fun. I’m one of those people. Still, I don’t go to the casino often, and I was with friends, so I decided to let loose and play a negative expectancy game.
After reading about the statistics, I was able to bet in a way that gave the casino very little edge. I’d put $10 on the pass line. This bet gave the house a 1.41% edge. If I didn’t crap out on this roll, though, I was able to triple this bet and put $30 more behind the pass line. This $40 bet is even odds, but can only be played if you take the first bet. So I think the two bets together give the house less than a 0.5% edge.
I figured with only $40 at most on the table (and ten times that amount in reserves) I would be able to withstand most drawdowns and there was a good chance of quitting while I was ahead.
I got lucky on my first day and I just kept winning. The money started to roll in and I decided to play it like a trade - I’d keep a trailing stop. Each time I went over another multiple of $100, I decided to put the stop at the last $100 mark. So I ended up quitting at over +$300 the first day.
When my friends kept gambling throughout the evening, I didn’t want to play anymore - I figured why push my luck? So I went to check out the new poker room and enjoy the free drinks.
The next day, before I left, I thought to myself, “the odds are almost 50-50. Why don’t I just go to the table with the $300 I won, and if I can get it to $400, I will quit for an easy $100 profit.” It’s true, I am risking $300 to make $100. But I have a much better chance of walking away with $100 than I do of losing. I would lose more if I lost, but I had a better chance of winning than losing. So I went and made another $100+ and quit.
I wouldn’t quit my day job (if I had one) to go to the casinos with this strategy, because, like I said, it has a negative expectancy. But if you’re at a casino and you want to play a game of chance with the best odds - and craps is fun because when you win, everyone at the table wins - then this is probably a good bet. It worked for me.

I’ll be in Atlantic City on the last weekend in April and the people I am going with usually play craps. I will probably mostly play poker, but I have been reading about craps to try to find an optimal betting strategy based on the odds.
As a trader, I found this line in the wikipedia entry funny:

Since all bets have a house advantage (and a negative expected value) the optimal strategy is not to bet. Players can, however, reduce their average hourly losses by only placing bets with the smallest house advantage.

So if I work and study and memorize the best strategy, I will lose less over the hours. Great.
Maybe I won’t play craps.
Even though craps has “the best odds of all standard casino games based on pure chance,” I may be anti-social and go down to the poker tables.

Buffet went bust quickly in a recent charity Texas Hold’em poker tournament.

“It’s different than bridge,� said Buffett, 76, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. “I was confused. I thought the low score won.�

Buffet spends 12 hours a week playing bridge.

The American Association for Artificial Intelligence is sponsoring a computer poker tournament July 16-20 in Boston. The games will be will be heads-up limit Texas Hold-Em. Unlike chess, where computers can beat the world’s best players, poker programs have trouble with the uncertainty, probability, guesswork and deception of poker - a game of imperfect information.

No matter which program wins the Boston contest, computers are still no match for a top-level human at the poker table.
Phil Laak, a champion player, crushed Poker Probot at the World Series of Poker last year. During the match, the audience chanted, “Humans! Humans!”
According to Lebiere, poker robots are now about as skillful as computer chess programs were in the 1950s and `60s, when humans could beat them easily.

It won’t be long before computers are better at poker. Can you imagine when they are the best traders in the world? My guess is that this will happen soon.

Because of my trip to Atlantic City and influence from some readers and friends, I have started playing online poker again. I am used to a lot of trash talk from my years of experience playing online chess. It is fun and harmless and can be pretty humorous. It is a lot like the yahoo message board chatter. Some guy joined my table today, recognized someone and said “coming to take your cheese, hoe.” I thought that was a pretty good one.
Speaking of chess and betting, PinnacleSports.com has become the first sportsbook to accept bets on professional chess.

“While it may not seem as popular as football or basketball, chess is played by millions around the globe and has as loyal a following as any other major sport. Individuals have been betting on the outcome of chess matches for hundreds of years, so we felt it was only natural to offer the world a way to bet on the U.S. Chess League.”

I went to Atlantic City over the weekend and played some poker at the Borgata. What a blast. I had loads of fun and I expect to go back at least once a month. I lost money in craps and roulette - I didn’t really know what I was doing. But I made it back and then some with poker. A lot of people prefer playing online, rather than in a casino, because you can play right from your home, faster action, convenience, etc… I prefer playing at a casino because I think it is more fun and especially because I know I am not playing against a computer. But as long as you are profitable, it doesn’t really matter where you play.

Be careful playing online poker for money. I gave it up after my “stop-loss” triggered. Software such as WinHoldEm “apply strategy gleaned from decades of research” and can collaborate through back-channels. If computers can dominate online chess, they probably have already dominated online poker.
Link via boinboing

Related Link: Full Tilt Bonus Code Play Texas Holdem while you’re at it.

When I play chess online, the best players are computers. You can tell when you are playing a computer because they have a little (c) next to their username. There isn’t incentive to pretend to be a human, while actually playing with a program, because the only thing involved is rating points (although I have been accused of being a computer from an opponent, along with many other things). But with online poker, who knows how many people are really just computer programs? As a programmer, I think it would be much easier (and much more profitable) to write a very good poker-playing program rather than one that beats the best chess players. Here is an article that talks briefly about the subject, indicating that “They Won’t Be A Threat To Humans Until They Can Smoke Cigars, Chew Terbacky, And Spit.”

That’s trickier than chess, which computers mastered when Deep Blue beat human champ Garry Kasparov. Chess is a “perfect information game”: Every player knows the position of every piece on the board. Poker is a “misinformation game”: You don’t know what cards have yet to be dealt or what your opponents are holding, and your opponents are out to trick you.

Related Link: full tilt poker the best poker web site

Whenever I play poker there is always a lot of talk about luck. Usually it is someone blaming poor luck for their own losing mistakes. Sure, there will be times when you can’t get any cards. But that’s part of the game! To me, poker is a game of 100% skill. Everyone knows the rules and everyone has the same chance of getting lucky, so the game is about managing your money.
The same is true with the stock market. If you ever lose too much, it is always your own fault, no matter how it happened.